1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic flash apparatus for photography with a camera, and more particularly to improvements of the electronic flash apparatus capable of bounce lighting and having a preliminary light source from which a preliminary scene illumination can be produced.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has already been known in the art to provide an electronic flash apparatus in which prior to making a flash exposure, a preliminary lighting is carried out, and a previous adjustment of the photographic condition based on the information obtained by such a preliminary scene illumination before a main flash lighting so as to get a proper exposure for a subject of principal photographic interest as it is actually illuminated by the adjusted main flash.
Among the known flash lighting methods, there is known one in which the flash lamp is not pointed directly to the subject but at, for example, a ceiling or wall from which the soft light is reflected to the subject, or the bounce flash.
Because the intensity of the light that falls on the subject depends largely on the reflectance of the surface from which the light bounces, as its value varies from situation to situation, it has been difficult to make a previous adjustment of the photographic condition based on the information obtained by the metering light before a flash exposure is actually made, for such an electronic flash apparatus that enables the exposure light source to be pointed at the ceiling, but that has its metering light source only directed to the subject.
To avoid this, there has been a previous proposal for putting the metering light source into the common casing of the exposure light source which casing is pivotal relative to the main body so that when to make a bounced-flash exposure, the metering light is also made bounced to form an automatic adjustment of the photographic condition, for example, the aperture, in accordance with the level of reflection of the metering light as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,353 (issued Aug. 14, 1984). This prior known apparatus has, however, a problem that the size of the casing containing both of the light sources becomes very large, and the production cost is also increased.